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> The majority of a long haul trucker's job is interacting with legal authorities at weigh stations, dealing with loading crews, performing required truck maint
by ori_b 10y ago
> The majority of a long haul trucker's job is interacting with legal authorities at weigh stations, dealing with loading crews, performing required truck maintenance on the road, etc...
In other words, the parts that don't have to move much. You can keep a much smaller, more local staff that costs far less per volume of goods flowing. A single agent at a weigh station that handles hundreds of trucks a day, instead of a truck driver per truck. A set of contracts with local mechanics that get paged if a truck breaks down along the route. Loading crews can load trucks without a truck driver, And so on.
You don't need someone to attend the trucks -- you just need people at key points along the routes.
- mfoy_ 10y agoOr even simpler, have the self-driving truck, but keep the "driver" to do all the normal non-driving stuff. Would be a great opportunity to get a lot of reading done, for example.
- ori_b 10y agoThat's possible, but it's rather expensive to pay someone to read for most of the day.
- phamilton 10y agoThe solution I liked was to make call center employees double as "drivers" of automated vehicles.
- csours 10y agoCongratulations, now you have a bunch of disgruntled, angry people driving murder machines.
- raisedbyninjas 10y agoYou could about cut the cost in half if the drivers could sleep while driving and remove the driving time limit laws.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoThey're already paying them to drive all day.
- ori_b 10y agoYes, and the point of self driving cars is to avoid doing that.
- agumonkey 10y agoLet's discuss a world where mobility doesn't mean mind dedication. With the few VR/AR things popping all around, handling a truck might just be a pause after a 2 hour meeting in your virtual office. Take that space time.